Terror Targeting

The Morale of the Story

One might say that the physical seem little more than the wooden hilt, while the
moral factors are the precious metal, the real weapon, the finely-honed blade.

--Carl von Clausewitz

*The author wishes to thank Maj Pete Osika, Dr. Ken Werrell, and Dr. Tom Hughes
for their helpful suggestions. Any errors of fact or interpretation are the author's
alone.

CLAUSEWITZ NOTED CORRECTLY that war
is foggy. One of its foggiest elements is morale, a subject clearly less glamorous than
high-technology precision weapons and information systems but no less important. There has
been no "revolution in morale affairs" to make the gray shades of morale more
black and white. Instead, because morale keeps us flying on instruments "in the
soup," it serves as a governor to check the hyper pace of modern warfare. Morale
inertia also carries an imperative that the will to win the fight is something the victor
must maintain and the vanquished must lose.1 United States Air Force leaders
know this because they continue to face challenges worldwide having to do with people's
willingness or lack of will to keep the peace. Morale played a major part during aerial
bombing campaigns in Southwest Asia and more recently in Eastern Europe, where it again
remained an elusive but critical factor. In addition, despite the Air Force's airpower and
space power preeminence in the world, its people are suffering declining morale due to
high operations tempo and unpredictable deployments. Fundamental to the Air Force's
current scheduling transformation--using on-call expeditionary wings--is a desire to
improve the current morale slump and its consequent impact on retention.

Morale's interface with high operations tempo and aerial bombing is nothing new to the
Air Force, and sometimes a review of the past can help illuminate present situations.
Clausewitz once again has appropriate words: "History provides the strongest proof of
the importance of moral factors and their often incredible effect: this is the noblest and
most solid nourishment that the mind of a general may draw from a study of the past."2

For this article, the study of the past involves primarily World War II, when US Army
Air Forces leaders also faced tough choices as high aircrew morale corresponded to
percep-tions of success against the enemy, but low morale reflected excessive operations
tempo and losses. The article explores morale theoretically as well as historically,
linking it to leadership by analyzing how various military leaders approached morale and
made it integral to operations. It presents a typology of positive and negative morale and
analyzes the role of morale in past wars--in particular, World War II area
("terror")3 bombing--to suggest that morale was, and still is,
fundamentally one of the most difficult issues with which aerial strategists and aviators
have had to deal. Finally, it argues that although morale is a fuzzy subject, it requires
both pinpoint accuracy and understanding when it comes to targeting.

This is a high-pitched theoretical study about some complex issues, but it is written
for the Air Force flyer, who needs to consider what his or her predecessors were doing and
thinking in the past when they launched into the wild blue. Operators need to be thinkers.
Especially when one is under the increasing stress of combat and operations tempo, it is
important to be morally committed to the mission, knowing that it is the right thing to
do.

Morale is an age-old challenge. During World War II's Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO),
morale bombing was costly and its success unproven. Likewise, morale bombing still appears
to be a major challenge today for "effects-based targeting," particularly for a
quick win during the so-called halt phase of war. Another challenge is unit morale, the
commander's constant concern. In a way, morale is like a trump card of war, and Air Force
decision makers today must appreciate it as one of the major organizational and
operational issues facing the Expeditionary Air Force.

At the previous turn of the century, military leaders considered moral force primary to
victory. Hence, military leaders had to know how to boost unit morale, and staff-college
courses emphasized morale as several times more important than materiel factors. One word,
moral, meant both morality and morale. Tied to élan, moral force, and the
offensive, most military leaders considered morale essential to victory.4

Morale has different meanings but generally refers to individual or collective
mental attitude. Military theorist and historian S. L. A. Marshall says morale is
"when your hands and feet keep working when your head says it can't be done."5
Another author says it is "wanting to do what you have to do."6 These
nonesoteric descriptions are useful in understanding morale, particularly in the heat of
battle. If morale is the desire to continue the fight, then strategies must target morale
in order to break the enemy's will to resist. This is why morale is so important. It can
lie at the heart of targeting for effect.

Yet, targeting morale is complex. It can involve both indirect and direct attack
against a multitude of potential targets. One of the most important indirect targets is
leadership because it is linked to discipline, key to the strength of unit or societal
morale.7

According to Marshall, morale and discipline lie on opposite sides of a coin:
"When one is present, the other will be also. But the instilling of these things in
military forces depends upon leadership understanding the nature of the
relationship."8 The leader holds that coin in hand and must understand and
exploit discipline to boost morale. Discipline and morale come from each other and are
symptoms of each other; both play a part under fire to keep soldiers fighting.9
This involves not only smaller military units but, as Clausewitz notes, extends to
leadership in society.10

Of course the discipline thing can go too far. A military unit that is disciplined too
harshly will have low or "negative" morale. Level of intelligence or education
may affect this, insofar as "thinking" people might embrace discipline when it
makes sense but then not stand for tyrannical discipline.11 For example, many
relatively well-educated members of bomber crews showed strength of will to fly dangerous
bombing missions unless they felt hopelessly abused.

The most effective mix is reasonable discipline and unreasonable morale. Reasonable
discipline causes soldiers to feel good about themselves as a unit. Unreasonable morale is
the kind of enthusiasm that helps soldiers charge into danger or hold ground against
difficult odds. Again, effective leadership is the key: "The morale of the force
flows from the self-discipline of the commander, and in turn, the discipline of the force
is reestablished by the upsurge of its moral power."12

Specifically, morale-boosting leadership means caring for the troops, acting justly,
setting an impeccable image, and allowing people to see themselves as fighting soldiers.13
Historian Mark Wells notes in his definitive study of morale in World War II bomber
aircrews that leadership was paramount to the success of fighting units and the principal
difference between low or high squadron morale.14

These same concepts would seem to apply as well to civilian societies, which also have
levels of social and cultural discipline, often embodied in customs and traditions,
understood ethnic codes, or laws. Correspondingly, the leaders of those societies play
fundamental parts in setting and maintaining national perceptions and the social will to
maintain discipline (i.e., in time of war, the will to fight).15

Col Dale Smith links leadership, morale, and organizational success, and he identifies
nine components of leadership and morale success.16 Most importantly, to boost
morale, the leader must maintain overall unity of purpose and the perception of progress
toward that purpose. Thus, a basic morale target is leadership, not so much from the
standpoint of Col John Warden's inner ring and the leadership linkage to command and
control (C2) but from what might be called "morale control"--the way
leadership affects discipline and people's perceptions of a united purpose. Interestingly,
none of Smith's components relate to basic living standards often associated with morale
and targeted as a way to break the enemy's will.

Although morale is influenced by food, safety, and health, it transcends these basic
concerns when it comes to mission and objectives. Morale during World War II was usually
higher in active theaters than in noncombat areas, despite the increased danger.17
Furthermore, at a much safer time of postwar withdrawal, morale dropped to its lowest
level of the war. Finally, as the article discusses later in more detail, significantly
reduced living conditions in Germany and Japan did not cause the populace to quit working.
Again, unit perceptions of successful contribution to the mission and objective override
other morale factors, making some of the concepts behind CBO area bombing questionable.
The strategy appears to have targeted living/working conditions more than perceptions of
objectives and unity of purpose because bombs were not dropped on urban areas in Germany
with the assumption or hope they would hit Nazi leadership. Rather, they were aimed at the
general society.

Since Napoleonic times, societies have become part of the fight and sometimes part of
the target. Brig Gen Giulio Douhet proposed that aerial bombardment strategy no longer
differentiate between combatants and noncombatants. Obviously, this was the situation in
World War II, in which civilian morale was as important as that of the military.18
The military and cultural discipline of the Germans and Japanese from 1940 to 1945 most
likely played a large part in maintaining their will to fight. Hence, cultural discipline
and national leadership became fundamental factors in the war. Interestingly, however,
strict totalitarian regimes and democratic states showed similar levels in the morale
strength of civilians,19 most likely because both types maintained unity of
purpose.

Unity of purpose, then, probably relates to the morale Schwerpunkt of a
resilient people. The morale center of gravity is leadership-inspired individual and
collective confidence in unity of purpose. After people have lost confidence in
leadership, in their own abilities, and in their contribution to the war effort, they may
cease resisting. Targeting confidence, however, is a complex issue, but an important part
of it is leadership.

Again, targeting can be direct or indirect. Obviously, leadership influence can be
eliminated by cutting command or social-structure linkages so that society no longer
associates its confidence with its leaders. Another indirect option involves bombing the
society at large so as to kill the populace or at least cause loss of sleep and reduced
worker performance.20 That sounds like direct targeting, but it is not. It
eliminates the confidence of the victims, but the actual target is the confidence victims,
but the actual target is the confidence and morale of the surviving population.

The German plan Fall Gelb--the invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg, and the
Netherlands--was based partly on the assumption that French moral force was weak and would
collapse under the effect of a decisive blow against the army.21 According to
one author, "France had become accustomed to defeat and the habit had acquired its
own aura of apathetic fatalism."22 Vichy France was a direct result of
military defeat and morale collapse.23 On the other hand, the French
resis-tance movement showed great social discipline and morale strength. Similarly, Soviet
civilians and soldiers showed incredible strength of will facing German opposition as well
as purges from within: "The Soviet Army displayed a bravery, tenacity and lack of
squeamishness about casualties that suggested that the traditional qualities of Russian
soldiery had not been undermined by Stalin's tyranny."24 Against such
strength of moral will, perhaps Adolf Hitler's Operation Barbarossa was doomed from the
start. Although in some respects Hitler may have been a master at using morale to suit his
purposes, he clearly did not properly attack Soviet morale--particularly in treating
Russians and Slavic people as Untermenschen or inferiors. Why moral force collapses
in some instances and not in others is part of the chance of war, but the challenge to the
military strategist is to at least try to influence the odds.

Direct targeting of morale involves attacking group goals, cultural histories and
traditions, symbols, and ideology.25 Psychological operations (PSYOP) is
officially the business of targeting the mind of the enemy and often his will to resist,
but the distinction with PSYOP is how the message is communicated. Normally geared
directly toward morale, PSYOP uses television, radio broadcasts, and other methodologies
rather than physical destruction to convince the enemy to do something.26 In
addition, information warfare and elements of unconventional/revolutionary warfare seen in
the writings of Mao Tse-tung come close to a direct-attack methodology.

Morale bombing in World War II, on the other hand, entailed indirect attack against the
will to resist. It followed Alexander de Se-versky's advocacy of attacking communications,
administration, and basic requirements for living: food, shelter, safety, and clothing.27
Attacking morale in this manner, indirectly, is a strategy of exhaustion. The German
strategist Hans Delbrück categorized strategy into two camps: Ermattungstrategie
(exhaustion) and Niederwerfungstrategie (annihilation). So far, and certainly as
the CBO demonstrated, indirect targeting of morale has correlated more closely to an
exhaustion strategy.

Many times during World War II, indirect attack--not just from the air--failed to
achieve moral collapse. For example, the Germans failed to destroy the will of Soviet
citizens during the siege of Leningrad. In a tragic irony, German civilians in Dresden
died in the inferno of firestorms while inhabitants of Leningrad froze to death. The fact
that these and other examples of indirect attack on morale in World War II enjoyed only
moderate success might suggest that strategists misunderstood morale or engaged in terror
bombing simply because they had no other option. They were faced with the extreme need to
win the war and were committed to do that, no matter the cost.

So far, this analysis has suggested that effectively targeting morale means hitting the
leadership and social- or command-structure linkages that give morale its strength. Since
morale is linked to leadership, discipline, and perceived unity of objective or purpose,
indirect or direct attacks must aim to eliminate those entities. The morale-targeting
dilemma, however, is still more complicated than that because morale is a two-way street
of cause and effect. For further analysis, one may break morale into parts.

Morale exists in both positive and negative planes. This description is more useful
than others, such as "good" or "bad" morale, since the words positive
and negative provide a sense of the electric-emotional charge associated with each.
On the one hand, positive morale is the charged-up, excited camaraderie soldiers gain from
satisfied needs, their positive sense of mission and unity, or a wide spectrum of other
causes. Respect for a leader can manifest itself in positive morale; also, as mentioned,
effective discipline plays a key role in positive morale. Most commonly, positive morale
involves mutual confidence and striving for something more important than the individual.28
Ground soldiers often experience positive morale when they see friendly flyers overhead.
They know they are part of a team effort and have not been abandoned. The bottom line from
the aircrew perspective is that positive morale leads to completed missions.

Negative morale, on the other hand, is the poor motivation, cynicism, and contempt
toward leadership and unit that are detrimental to the mission. It is not a lack of drive
to succeed, for that is the absence of positive morale. Rather, negative morale is the
desire not to succeed--to surrender, run away, or mutiny. For example, in World War I,
German ground soldiers suspected that their Luftwaffe brothers were cowardly when they did
not see them airborne but saw British flyers overhead instead. Daily diaries of ground
soldiers mention that while they were in the trenches with little food, members of the
Luftwaffe were back in the safety of Germany eating cake and drinking coffee.29
During the next world war, negative morale grew among CBO bomber crews when their chances
for survival diminished. Increasing numbers of airmen reported to the flight surgeon with
questionable illnesses, and animosity grew toward superiors. Bomber Command was well aware
that such negative morale could spread to endanger the mission and dealt harshly with
cases concerning potential negative morale.30 The American side of the CBO
expressed equal concern. For example, a questionable report from a retired Army officer in
Sweden was circulated in 1944, claiming that to date nearly two hundred aircrews had
landed in neutral countries due to "lack of moral fiber."31 Not
wishing to publicize the issue and in defense of his heroic airmen, Lt Gen Carl A. Spaatz
became outraged at the report and subsequent inquiry.32

One should also differentiate between negative morale and combat-stress-induced
emotional breakdown.33 Negative morale involves a willful decision to
discontinue the fight or to jeopardize the mission or cause. "Emotional
casualties," however, involve people who simply lack the capability to decide at all.34
Such casualties reflect an illness of the mind whereas negative morale reflects an
attitude of the mind. The primary cause of negative morale is lack of confidence in
leadership and perceived disunity of purpose; the primary causes of combat stress are
fatigue and fear.35

[Emotional] casualties reflect an illness of the mind
whereas negative morale reflects an attitude of the mind.

One might assert that negative morale does not exist or is simply the absence of
positive morale, arguing that morale itself is inherently positive. Perhaps this is true
from the standpoint of the dictionary definition, but in terms of military effect, one has
reasons to consider the negative aspect. Comparing morale to air is a useful analogy. We
need air to fly and to breathe, just as soldiers need morale to fight effectively. Using
this analogy, one might say incorrectly that the absence of air--a vacuum--is negative
morale. Obviously, air breathers would not fight well in a vacuum, and an aircraft will
not obtain lift in a vacuum. This, however, is more accurately the absence of air--related
to the absence of morale. On the other hand, what if there is no vacuum--just bad air? Now
soldiers could breathe but die from poison gas, or airmen might fly but then get knocked
out of the sky by excessive turbulence. The linguistic scholar may argue that negative
morale simply has another name: depression, dislocation, or even "the blues."
Regardless, the important point is that the morale targeting officer recognize the
conceptual difference between the positive and negative aspects of morale.

In World War II, the strategy behind morale bombing involved both positive and negative
morale. Bombing Germany could boost the Allies' positive morale by satisfying desires for
retribution, and it could cause negative morale in Germans, who might eventually revolt
against their system and cause the German war machine to implode.

This balance between positive and negative morale, however, can rebound and have the
opposite effect. For example, when airmen are killed carrying out bombing campaigns, the
unit's negative morale grows. In addition, as shown by Londoners during the blitz and by
many Germans as well, bombing cities may not break civilian will and, on occasion, can
even boost it. Adm Alfred Thayer Mahan was aware of such national strength when he
categorized population and government types as factors in world power.36 The
Vietnam War is another interesting example of airpower in relation to the will of the
enemy--in this case, the enemy's will to resist negotiations. From Rolling Thunder to
Linebacker II, morale ebbed and flowed between the positive and the negative on both sides
of the conflict, and many historians have argued that the downturn of morale on the part
of Americans--or at least the stronger morale on the part of the North
Vietnamese--contributed to North Vietnam's success.37

We now turn to an examination of history and the way various leaders approached morale
dilemmas during World War II's CBO. Lord Hugh Trenchard, head of the Royal Flying Corps in
1915 and future marshal of the Royal Air Force (RAF), prioritized morale to the extreme,
stating that, in war, the "moral" was 20 times more important than the physical.38
His calculation was unscientific--simply a perception of damage and accompanying numerical
emphasis on morale, which he linked to the offensive doctrine that dominated tactical and
strategic thinking at the time.39

Critics have attacked Trenchard for his dogmatic approach to morale-oriented offensive
tactics and for promoting the concept of area bombing against urban populations to break
the enemy's will to resist.40 Various writers claim that he pursued both
immoral and ineffective bombing practices.41

Moral judgments vary, depending on circumstances. On the one hand, it may have been
morally questionable during World War II to kill or wound 2.2 million Japanese people with
aerial bombing and drive another 8.5 million to the hills by destroying their homes.42
Yet, for someone whose family had been brutally killed by Japanese soldiers, morality may
not have been much of an issue.43 On the other hand, when such use of airpower
is part of a wartime strategy of coercion or denial that fails to break the will of
civilians or soldiers, the idea of attacking morale is questionable for a different
reason--simple effectiveness.44

John Keegan, in The Face of Battle, claims that victory is the moral collapse of
the enemy.45 Apparently, British and American air strategists of World War II
agreed with that concept. Bombing to break enemy morale was part of the CBO, as stated in
Casablanca's Point Blank directive: "The progressive destruction and dislocation of
the German military, industrial, and economic system, and the undermining of the morale
of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally
weakened. This is construed as meaning so weakened as to permit initiation of final
combined operations on the continent" (emphasis added).46

This approach to morale basically agreed with RAF Bomber Command's earlier directive
issued 9 July 1941, stating that the bombing objective involved "dislocating the
German transportation system and destroying the morale of the civilian population as a
whole and of the industrial workers in particular."47 On the material
side, the CBO directive established intermediate, primary, and secondary objectives:
Luftwaffe fighter strength, German submarine yards and bases, aircraft industry, ball
bearings, oil, synthetic rubber and tires, and military motor-transport vehicles.48
Thus, with multiple targets and objectives, the CBO was a large and complex campaign
relative to the rest of the war. At its peak it involved 28,000 Allied combat planes and
1,335,000 men. Of those, many were lost in action, costing nearly a third of the total
combined British and American war effort. The question of whether or not this was blood
and machines well spent certainly had an overall impact on Allied morale in general--and
similar questions are still pertinent to morale in today's conflicts. The difference
between then and now, however, lies in the quantity behind the question. The modern
aversion to casualties tends to illuminate the morale lowlight whenever one encounters a
cost, human or machine, for which leadership is unable to instill the positive perception
that a compelling reason exists for such expense.49

In retrospect, the CBO was moderately successful. It indirectly led to victory by
damaging the German economy and industry; it achieved air superiority over the Luftwaffe
in Europe; and it created an "indirect effect" by dislocating Wehrmacht efforts
toward defense, making them unavailable for other purposes. It achieved its objectives of
assisting indirectly with the Battle of the Atlantic and creating favorable conditions for
Overlord.50

From the standpoint of morale, however, the CBO's success in breaking the enemy's will
to resist was questionable.51 Some authors have suggested that Allied and Axis
aerial attacks on people showed, ironically, that civilian resolve may have been stronger
than that of soldiers.52 Morale bombing undeniably caused significant
suffering, insecurity, and lack of confidence in Nazi propaganda, but this still had no
appreciable effect on behavior. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey
concluded that "depressed and discouraged workers were not necessarily unproductive
workers."53 Apparently, British strategists were incorrect in assuming
that the German people would be less resilient than the British.54

Likewise, aerial bombing of similarly resilient Japanese civilians and soldiers proved
to be a very difficult way to break the enemy's will. Here again, suffering and
dislocation did not necessarily translate into a behavioral change, as indicated in a
captured diary of a Japanese soldier who wanted some Japanese air cover against constant
and "especially fierce" aerial bombardment: "Oh God, please send us some
planes--even if it is only one. . . . No matter what happens, I shall live through to do
my best to once again renew my spirit and my pledge. I'm not afraid of their planes, their
mortars, their shelling--this is the spirit of Japan--I will fight on."55
Against such an indomitable spirit, aerial bombing achieved only mixed success.

Thus, the morale bombing of World War II remains a contentious topic in the history of
airpower.56 Without decisively affecting the enemy's will or morale, terror
bombing produced, in the words of one author, "a torrent of destruction without
precedent."57 It also cost the lives of thousands of airmen so that 55
years after the fact, students of history are still asking if the results were worth the
price.

Terror bombing was a compromise. It involved British and American domestic and
political pressures for revenge in terms of offensive action, British and American
incapability to bomb precisely, vulnerabilities to the bombers' crew members, and airpower
theories about morale. Leaders figured that attacking enemy morale would boost waning
Allied morale. Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Privy Seal and leader of the House of Commons,
had serious doubts by mid-1942 regarding British morale resulting from a perceived lack of
leadership in the war effort.58 In addition, the Americans wanted an invasion,
and the Russians demanded a second front. Hence, morale bombing served as appeasement. It
was also a convenient default compromise between different industrial-targeting options.
For example, when conflict arose within American and British camps over targeting options
such as electricity, oil, steel, and transportation, resulting directives included the
lowering of enemy morale as a as a beneficial product of the bombing, regardless of the
target option selected.59

Morale bombing was also a product of idealistic Douhetian theory, as well as overly
optimistic predictions about accuracy and effect.60 For example, in Britain the
directive of 9 July 1941 was the first to target morale specifically, linking it to
transportation targets (mostly railroads in the Ruhr Valley) and basing the decision on a
postulated mean bombing accuracy of six hundred yards on moonlit nights--something Bomber
Command fell far short of achieving.61 In addition to such mathematical
calculations, influential bombing advocates added their opinions. Trenchard wrote the
following to Winston Churchill in August 1942: "For the country to get mixed up this
year or next in land warfare on the continent of Europe is to play Germany's game. . . .
Our strength and advantage over Germany is in the air--the British and the American Air
Force."62 Although British and American strategic airpower theory had
begun similarly in targeting Germany's critical industrial nodes, Bomber Command adapted
to bombing inaccuracies and low aircraft survivability by switching to area industrial and
urban targeting. This decision was one of political, economic, technological, and military
expediency supplanting idealism.

Some historians imply that the Americans maintained higher moral ground than the
British in their use of airpower. Some did. American secretary of war Newton Baker had set
a tone out of World War I with a staunch stand against terror bombing, in contrast to Lord
William Weir, British air minister, who didn't mind if aerial bombing burned German
villages to the ground. Perhaps the most famous British area bombing advocate two decades
later was Air Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" or "Butch" Harris.
Perceiving the loss of Bomber Command's overall aim due to constantly changing target
directives, Harris vehemently criticized precision bombing of industrial bottlenecks as
"panacea" bombing.63 One should keep in mind, however, that many
Americans' perspective of World War II had not been tempered with firsthand experience of
two morale issues. One, the bomber did not, as Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin had
proclaimed, always get through (or those that did sustained heavy damage and loss of
life). Two, the Germans had done it first with Lufttreitkräfte terror bombing of
London. Harris's approach evolved into a single-minded desire and determination to kill
German workers and disrupt German society.64 He became committed to this cause
and in some respects may have implemented the CBO directive incorrectly according to that
commitment.65 When challenged by superiors, Harris offered his resignation.

Harris had not been a terror-bombing disciple from the beginning but, like many others
in Bomber Command, switched reluctantly and gradually to area attack--not wishing to do
the wrong thing for the right reasons. Morale bombing had made sense on paper from a
deterrence standpoint, and many RAF leaders believed that "moral collapse was the
most likely outcome of bomb attack."66 Yet, to employ it was another
issue. During the Spanish Civil War, RAF air marshals had witnessed poor success against
morale from German aerial attacks on Madrid as well as Italian attacks on Barcelona.
Official RAF doctrine established in Air Pamphlet 1300 listed only military targets.67
Hence, one argument maintains that Harris and his command did not choose to switch to
morale bombing but that they were forced into it due to technological limitations and
political expediency.68 It was the only way to fulfill the RAF's traditional
raison d'être--Trenchard's aerial offensive dictum of bombing the enemy harder. As a
result, approximately three hundred thousand German civilians died due to aerial attacks,
a figure some people use to condemn CBO failure rather than to substantiate success.69

Harris and Bomber Command, however, were not singly responsible for the expediency
decision and its effects. For the most part, the American decision for daylight precision
bombing of industries was a matter of practicality more than morality.70
General Spaatz was against bombing cities, not so much due to personal conviction of
conscience but because he thought it was less efficient and effective than bombing the
Luftwaffe and oil. This approach was in concert with the original American force-structure
plan known as Air War Plans Division--Plan 1 (AWPD-1), developed by former Air Corps
Tactical School instructors.71 Also, American bombing in 1945 against both
Germany and Japan was as much terror bombing of civilians as any conducted by Bomber
Command. Furthermore, one should remember that the Americans agreed to British area
bombing as part of the CBO. Finally, like the British, the Americans also moved toward
area bombing due to "circumstances well beyond control of the Army Air Forces."72
Eighth Air Force dropped as many tons of bombs on ball-bearing manufacturing via area
bombing as by "pickle barrel" bombing, with full knowledge of the collateral
damage. American high-altitude daylight precision bombing was often no more precise than
British area bombing at night.73

Ironically, near the end of the war, the Americans and British were switching sides. By
late 1944 and early 1945, Bomber Command accuracy, Allied air superiority, and bomb
development led the British Air Staff to reconsider selective targeting, while the newly
designated United States Strategic Air Forces were seriously pursuing "psychological
bombing," as evidenced by the attacks on Berlin and Dresden in February 1945.74
As one author notes, "Certainly any distinction between American and British
practices was lost upon the citizens of Dresden, Chemnitz and Berlin after visitations by
the 8th Air Force in February 1945."75 The late shift in targeting,
perhaps not incidentally, coincided roughly with American firebombing of Japanese
cities--initiated for different reasons but area bombing of urban populations just the
same.

Ironically, Bomber Command morale rose when Harris took command in May 1942, despite
the fact that casualty rates immediately jumped from 3.7 to 4.3 percent. Harris knew that
4 percent was his break-even point for replacements to offset losses, and this led to his
decision to switch to 80 percent area bombing at night.76 In essence, then, the
morale-bombing decision was for morale purposes--positive for his men and negative for his
enemy.

Harris's American counterpart was General Spaatz, commander of Eighth Air Force.77
Like Harris, Spaatz also experienced morale difficulties due to wastage rates, a problem
he approached with tenacity. Spaatz had learned the hard way how not to try to boost
positive morale. His plan of providing crews leave in the United States, after which they
had to return to fight, proved counterproductive and was terminated. The best he could
hope for was simply giving aircrews the perception of a reasonable probability of survival
while ensuring mission accomplishment. Spaatz made the mission his first priority but
tried to keep crews hopeful that they could survive the 25 combat missions necessary to
accomplish the mission.78

Spaatz appears to have kept his compassion for the troops mostly to himself and was not
noted for charismatic pep talks. Instead, he believed that the most effective way to deal
with morale was simply to let flyers know exactly where they stood. In this regard, he
fought to make them believe in themselves and their positive effect on the war: "Our
most important job just now is keeping up morale of these boys who are doing the fighting,
and only by convincing them with facts can we prove to them that the results obtained are
worth the effort they are putting into the job."79 This clearly is an
example of the leadership-discipline-confidence linkage to morale discussed earlier.

Personal courage and mission first--that was how Spaatz
approached morale.

Finally, Spaatz was a doer rather than a preacher, which, according to S. L. A.
Marshall, is important.80 He says that a nondoer leader is like religion
without works--soulless. In Spaatz's case, no doubt his troops were aware that the general
who was commanding them had flown through many dangers himself, had shot down enemy
aircraft in World War I, and had set world records through personal courage in the air.
Personal courage and mission first--that was how Spaatz approached morale.

The most notable CBO aspects affecting morale were the dangerous missions and the
devastating firebombing. For example, Operation Gomorrah against Hamburg in summer 1943
was true terror bombing aimed to achieve negative German morale.81 On the other
hand, as German night-fighter developments offset the British safety factor of night
operations, losses incurred during the area bombing of Berlin six months later served to
damage the positive morale of Bomber Command's crews. The Americans also paid the price in
lives with elusive success against key industrial nodes. On the Schweinfurt raids of 17
August and 14 October 1943, the unescorted bomber was clearly not as invulnerable as Gen
Ira Eaker had predicted.82 No doubt, fighter escorts such as P-51 Mustangs were
a huge morale boost to bomber crews on operations like Argument--popularly known as
"Big Week" during February 1944. Even the unofficial escort name "little
friends" connotes such positive morale.83 Thus, at the risk of
oversimplification, morale in the CBO was a bit like a teeter-totter: a rise in positive
morale on one side could eventually affect negative morale on the other.

In a sense, a similar moral stage was set at sea, where the urban city was replaced by
the merchant ship. Just as civilians in cities were integral to Germany's war-fighting
production, so were civilian sailors helping to resupply British and American war
fighters. The Germans gravitated to unrestricted submarine warfare as they had done during
the previous world war, attacking sea-lanes of communications and threatening "the
survival of Great Britain and its postwar freedom of action as a great power."84
Similar to Bomber Command's expediency to engage in aerial area bombing, it was also
safest and most practical for German U-boat commanders to attack lone merchant ships
without warning or attack convoys at night using Adm Karl Dönitz's Rudeltaktiken (wolf-pack
tactics).85 Similarity between aerial and sea activities is less important than
the fact that both situations heavily involved morale. Torpedoes, cold water, and sharks
were terrifying to American sailors, just as antiaircraft flak and Luftwaffe fighters were
to the bombers' crew members. From a more strategic perspective of morale in terms of
economy and national survival, British prime minister Churchill noted that the only thing
that really frightened him during the war was the U-boat peril.86

The CBO and the aerial bombing of Japa-nese cities were moderately successful campaigns
of materiel exhaustion in which Allied operations succeeded in outlasting the enemy. In
that sense, then, they were also campaigns of morale attrition. On the morale side,
however, the campaigns were less successful. According to the recently declassified and
published findings of the British Bombing Survey Unit, "in so far as the offensive
against German towns was designed to break the morale of the German civilian population,
it clearly failed."87

The Air Force today lives with the legacy of World War II's bombing campaigns, both
positively and negatively. The harshest critics posit various racial attitudes and
conspiracy theories behind terror bombing; others argue that bombing was the manifestation
of parochial interests to win the war for airpower more than to win the war itself.88
One argument holds that damage and destruction counted, regardless of the effect, so the
CBO was tailored to burn and destroy. The important fact for today, however, is that the
situation has been reversed. American expectations now are that the Air Force must perform
with precision and effect. This is a positive improvement in American aerial warfare,
despite the potential inability to meet expectations should they become unrealistic.
Still, perhaps the greatest difficulty is achieving expectations regarding morale.

This article argues that realistic expectations about targeting morale need to reflect
an understanding of morale's complex and critically important role in war. As CBO planners
learned, one cannot assume that bombing enemy targets like oil, electricity, and
transportation systems will also, as a default, affect as desired an abstract target like
enemy morale. Before air campaign planners target morale as part of a war-winning
strategy, they should consider it in both its positive and negative realms, as well as in
its relationship to leadership and discipline. Despite quantum improvements in
technologies, organization, and thinking since the time of World War II's CBO, some things
remain the same. War is still hell, and the challenge of bombing to maintain or destroy
morale is monumental.

World War II's CBO was successful in setting the stage for the success of Overlord, but
the terror bombing of civilians was not very successful. As a strategy, it caused negative
morale among bomber crews, and it failed to target the Schwerpunkt of German
morale, just as firebombing Japanese cities failed to break the Japanese will to resist.
Why then did Allied decision makers go for the terror-bombing option? There are many
plausible reasons: desire for revenge and "eye-for-an-eye" retribution,
inability to do anything else while facing a daunting enemy and a very uncertain future,
perceived opportunity to prove the raison d'être of the air forces, avoidance of friendly
ground casualties, and belief that it would break enemy will. All of these and other
reasons aside, the important point for today is knowing that targeting morale requires
precise aerial bombing of C2 and leadership to disrupt the linkage among
leadership, morale, and organization success. Damaging a populace's living conditions may
not break its will to resist unless carried to the morally questionable extremes of
killing most of the people or completely destroying their ability to survive. At the time
of the CBO, such apparent ruthless retribution as part of a strategy was more
understandable to decision makers and Allied societies than it is to students of history
who have not lived through the blitz and faced such an enormous task and uncertain
outcome. Yet, with contemporary capabilities to do precision strikes, such terror uses of
airpower are now unacceptable--for the United States at least. On the other hand,
destroying enemy perceptions of their unity of purpose in order to cause collapse of moral
force may still be a feasible strategy.

As CBO planners learned, one cannot assume that bombing enemy targets like
oil, electricity, and transportation systems will also, as a default, affect as desired an
abstract target like enemy morale.

Most likely that strategy will continue to be exacted in a CBO-type operation. The
practice of combining Allied aerial bombing forces began in World War I, was cemented in
World War II, and has continued since. A more recent and successful CBO took place after
the 1990 Iraqi aggression against Kuwait aroused coalition efforts against Saddam
Hussein's C2 centers, early warning systems, selected industries, Scud missile
sites, and Republican Guard forces. The Gulf War CBO, again involving allied day and night
aerial bombing, successfully dislocated the enemy with much greater precision than in the
past. Area bombing still had its place in the CBO, with B-52 carpet bombing on the
Republican Guard. This, however, was confined to soldiers and was effective in destroying
their will to resist. According to Gen Chuck Horner, the joint force air component
commander of the Gulf War, "there is powerful evidence from the 88,000 POWs that
air's most significant impact on Iraqi fighting strength was the destruction of
morale."89 In this respect, airpower was much more decisive in affecting
one of the foggiest factors of war.

Even more recently, aerial campaigns over the former Yugoslavia were again CBOs--this
time under the direction of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Likewise, these
CBOs clearly involved morale as well, which became increasingly complex due to various
so-called Cable News Network factors such as displaced millions of people and other
results of ethnic cleansing. Again the enemy's morale center of gravity was difficult to
target when it could not be isolated and was complicated by the fact that Serbia had a
long history of resilience to negative morale factors. Perhaps for this reason, NATO
air-to-ground targets reflected an objective to destroy Yugoslovia's infrastructure that
supported its military, rather than attacking strategically from the start against
leadership C2. The idea was not to target morale but just the opposite: to
deprive Slobodan Milosevic of the capability to pursue ethnic cleansing even if he still
had the will to do it. It was a straitjacket strategy and in many respects once again
became a process of attrition and exhaustion. As author William Arkin notes, "We won
through sheer repetition,"90 causing Milosevic eventually to discontinue
the fight and leave Kosovo. Air superiority and aircrew confidence promoted morale among
the NATO coalition, and the collateral damage to civilians was a miniscule fraction of
that witnessed in World War II. What went into Milosevic's eventual decision to leave can
only be surmised at this point, but perhaps it was knowing that NATO could hit pretty much
with impunity what, where, and when it wanted, and that he could do nothing to stop it
except pull out. The complete reality of what happened in Kosovo is still largely unknown
and now under intense study, hopefully to shed more light on the dilemma of targeting and
enemy morale. If nothing else, Kosovo reinforced the fact that morale is difficult to
understand and predict.

The many facets of the morale outlook for the US Air Force show improvement as well as
a warning. On the one hand, in the future, the added predictability provided by the
Aerospace Expeditionary Force management concept will provide deployed aircrews valuable
light at the end of the tunnel--critical for positive morale. On the other hand,
force-protection concerns and increased casualty aversion can be morale choke points and
must be perceived realistically. Americans may find themselves increasingly on the
receiving end of morale targeting in the form of terrorism. It is not simply coincidence
that terror bombing and terrorism share the same root word, for by its very nature,
terrorism generally involves indirect attack on morale.

The good news is that American terror bombing of civilians is history--it has gone the
way of pikes and muskets. We should not, however, pat ourselves on the back for being more
moral than our Air Force predecessors. Our technology has simply allowed us to act more
morally. With incredibly reduced circular errors of probability from munitions guided by
our Global Positioning System and the national commitment to use such expensive weapons,
we may now finally have the accuracy to target morale from the air without directly
killing many civilians. Yet, despite impressive abilities to halt enemies in their tracks
anywhere and anytime, targeting morale will probably still take more time than we would
like. It is part of the fog of war.

2. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), 185. See also Mark K. Wells, Courage
and Air Warfare: The Allied Aircrew Experience in the Second World War (London: Frank Cass,
1995), 213. Wells states that "it would be a terrible mistake for future commanders
and medical officers to overlook the human dimension of the Combined Bomber
Offensive."

3. Certainly, not all area bombing involves targeting morale under the label
"terror" bombing, but for purposes of this study of the Combined Bomber
Offensive, the terms are synonymous.

15. Clausewitz, 100-101, 104. Clausewitz discusses the concept in terms of levels of
development of civilized societies and relates genius in command with those degrees of
development. The commander is integral to unit morale and strength of will.

16. Smith, 44. The nine components are awareness of objectives, agreement with
objectives, faith in attainment of objectives, realistic picture of job ahead,
determination to achieve objectives, confidence in leadership, satisfaction with progress
toward objectives, extent of unification, and feelings of usefulness in contribution to
objectives.

20. Conrad C. Crane, Bombs, Cities, and Civilians: American Airpower Strategy in
World War II (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 14.

21. H. P. Willmott, The Great Crusade: A New Complete History of the Second World
War (New York: Free Press, 1989), 82.

22. Ibid., 87.

23. A contemporary example of collapsing morale was the surrender of thousands of Iraqi
Republican Guard soldiers following B-52 carpet bombing during the Gulf War of 1991.

24. Willmott, 142.

25. See Gilbert.

26. Steven Collins, "Army PSYOP in Bosnia: Capabilities and Constraints," Parameters
29, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 58. Collins argues that PSYOP has suffered from being stuck in a
rut of traditional uses of leaflets and loudspeakers when television is overwhelmingly
more effective today.

27. Crane, 18-24, provides an excellent discussion of this de Seversky thesis relative
to the myriad other ideas of indirect attack against civilian morale that influenced Air
Corps Tactical School thinkers and American air strategists.

37. George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975
(New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1996), 186, 204, 304; Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of
Airpower: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989), 149; and
Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1996), 210.

43. Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987), xi. In his sociological study of airpower, one
of Sherry's main themes is that "racial antagonisms" fueled American decisions
to bomb civilians. Yet, very likely race had nothing to do with much of the motivation. It
was simply reaction to overt aggression, regardless of race.

44. Pape's Bombing to Win provides an excellent analysis of coercive air strategies in
relation to civilian and military morale.

56. W. Hays Parks, "Air War and the Laws of War," in The Conduct of the Air
War in the Second World War: An International Comparison, ed. Horst Boog (Oxford: Berg
Publishers, Ltd., 1992), 355; and David MacIsaac, Strategic Bombing in World War II: The
Story of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976),
xxi. Other concise assessments of the historical morality debate are in Crane, 1­11;
Sherry, 15, 173­76; and Wells, 1.

59. The Strategic Air War against Germany, 2, 24. Although Bomber Command had plans
aimed specifically at morale--such as W.A.8 and Hurricane 2--in general, morale remained
an overarching abstract target that fit almost any plan to some degree.

61. The Strategic Air War against Germany, xxvii, 5. The Cabinet Office's "Butt
Report" condemned Bomber Command's accuracy by showing that only 10 percent of the
aircraft actually bombed within five miles of the target.

62. Churchill, 551.

63. The Strategic Air War against Germany, xxvii; and Levine, 37.

64. Biddle, 124.

65. British airpower historian Sebastian Cox's savvy perspective of Harris relative to
his wartime Bomber Command situation as well as complications from weather and other
factors is a helpful counterbalance to the traditional condemnation Harris has received in
the historiography. See The Strategic Air War against Germany, xxvii.

66. R. J. Overy, "Air Power: Historical Themes and Theories," in The Conduct
of the Air War in the Second World War, 25.

67. Phillip S. Meilinger, "Trenchard and 'Morale Bombing': The Evolution of Royal
Air Force Doctrine before World War II," The Journal of Military History 60 (April
1996): 258; James S. Corum, "From Biplanes to Blitzkrieg: The Development of German
Air Doctrine between the Wars," War in History 3 (1996): 98; and Rumpf, 214.

68. Biddle, 115.

69. Olaf Groehler, "The Strategic Air War and Its Impact," in The Conduct
of the Air War in the Second World War, 291-93; Rumpf, 229-33; and Levine, 190. One
should note that casualty figures are widely different, ranging from over five hundred
thousand to half that amount, depending on the source. According to the USSBS, the
numbers are closer to 305,000 killed and 780,000 wounded (page 21).

71. David R. Mets, Master of Airpower: General Carl A. Spaatz (Novato, Calif.:
Presidio Press, 1988), 114; and Crane, 22-26. At the Air Corps Tactical School, the
debate about targeting industry or civilians went round and round to eventually end up in
AWPD-1 with a decision to refrain from bombing population centers unless necessary as a
final death blow--and only when the proper psychological circumstances existed.

84. Kent Roberts Greenfield, American Strategy in World War II: A Reconsideration
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963), 3.

85. Keegan, 110; and Willmott, 64.

86. Keegan, 104. Perceived angst over the Battle of the Atlantic may have been worse
than the reality according to Clay Blair, in Hitler's U-Boat War, vol. 2, The
Hunted, 1942-1945 (New York: Random House, 1996). See also William L. O'Neill's
review of Blair in Strategic Review 27, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 59.

87. The Strategic Air War against Germany, 79. The difficulty of assessing CBO
success involves anecdotal and indirect measurement. The BBSU report on morale is
based largely on economic assessment, drawing the conclusion that failure to break
production meant failure to break morale. This was problematic, considering the fact that
the economic assessment was swayed by a distorted German war-economy report written by Dr.
Rolph Wagenfuehr. The USSBS included interviews of thirty-eight hundred people who
had suffered various degrees of war weariness.

Lt Col Eric Ash (USAFA; MA, Gonzaga University; MS, California State
University, Stanislaus; PhD, University of Calgary) is the editor of Aerospace Power
Journal and chief of professional journals at the College of Aerospace Doctrine
Research and Education, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He previously served as the commander of
both the 34th Education Squadron and the 34th Training Squadron at the United States Air
Force Academy and as a B-52 instructor and evaluator electronic warfare officer. He is the
author of Sir Frederick Sykes and the Air Revolution, 19121918 (Frank Cass,
1999). Colonel Ash is a graduate of Squadron Officer School and Air War College.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author
cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do
not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the
United States Air Force or the Air University.